You still use a Commodore 64 and find it revolutionary.
The Web moves quickly. Heck, we’re already hearing Web 3.0 being bantered around. Innovative communications tools are gaining ground and changing the way we do business. Combine this with the ever-increasing number of applications for mobile devices and you can be assured that your desk is no longer going to be your primary place of work.

The Web is not your audience’s primary source of information.
It may seem like everyone is on Facebook and Twitter these days and while that may be very true for consumer and enterprise audiences, there are groups that still prefer to get information through newsletters, courseware, seminars and print magazines. Before you engage in a social media strategy, be sure that who you are targeting has an online presence and that you can measure ROI. *You may find however that a bridging strategy such as the one suggested by ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick can work for you.

You are not prepared for positive and/or negative conversation.
Self-explanatory. You must consider how these conversations are going to impact you and your business. If a customer has a query, can you respond quickly? Can you set your feelings aside and enter into a friendly discussion with a competitor? If discussions increase awareness for your company and orders start flooding in, are you prepared to handle the calls? Do those in your online network uphold the same standard of online ethics/behaviour that you do? If you can’t answer “yes” then you may not be ready for all that social media can bring.

You don’t have anything to say.
Whether it’s creating a corporate blog or participating in an online community, you must build a presence and regular following to be truly effective. Don’t wing it. Instead, identify the key themes you’d like to address and topics of discussions you’d like to contribute to. While your conversations should remain candid, it’s also important that you don’t launch a blog and then go silent two weeks later because you’ve run out of relevant things to say.

Silicon Valley buzz maker Tom Foremski (formerly of Financial Times, now prominent SV blogger) made some news of his own today with this post in which he states that he will only receive PR pitches through FaceBook.

The switch up is really an experiment to try and ensure pitches are more customized, personalized and fit with what Foremski normally covers. But it isn’t all virtual, all the time. He says that face-to-face communications still trumps all other channels.

Something tells me he might be receiving a few friend requests this afternoon.

Zinc Research recently unveiled the results of their “Canadians and Facebook Survey” and it comes with a few surprises. According to the survey results, just over half of all Canadians that are online are now also members of FB. What’s more surprising is the rapid ramp-up of Canadian membership over the three months prior to Christmas. With an average of 5.7 hours a week spent on the uber-popular website, it is clear that Facebook still has legs. One thing found lacking in the report was any critical mention of the intensely popular social networking site. With the relatively recent opening up of the platform to developers, introduction of “targeted ads” (Hey Facebook, I don’t need to lose weight, really), advertiser fan pages and the kerfuffle regarding Beacon or FB’s policy of knowing what you are doing on non-Facebook sites, and in some cases actually publishing this activity has many long-time users fuming mad. Add the recent spam attacks to that and although the legs seem fine perhaps a new pair of shoes are needed to help the website really find its stride.